Telia Carrier has announced that the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and Facebook have completed a successful trial of 100G and 200G using Voyager gear on its 1,089km Stockholm to Hamburg route.

The trials, which demonstrated that 16QAM signalling works effectively over long distances, were carried out by leveraging technology developed by Coriant, a global supplier of SDN-enabled end-to-end packet optical networking and DCI solutions.

“Working with TIP, we’re working on open, disaggregated and scalable ways to deploy network capacity efficiently within diverse and changing environments,” said Hans-Juergen Schmidtke, co-chair of TIP’s open optical packet transport project group, and director of engineering at Facebook.

“Telia Carrier helped us move closer to our goal by testing Voyager Transponder on their network. We are excited by the results of this trial and look forward to working with the TIP community to further develop Voyager.”

Mattias Fridström, chief evangelist at Telia Carrier, said: “Telia Carrier is committed to innovation, and being a flexible option for content and service providers looking to meet the demands of today and tomorrow. We are proud to partner with Facebook and Coriant, and thank them for a successful trial, as we look to disrupt the normal way of thinking and provide connectivity for all. Telia Carrier is a long-time partner of Facebook, having built and managed the multi-terabit optical network connecting their data centre in Sweden to multiple exchange points throughout Europe. Like TIP and Facebook, we stand for openness and transparency for everyone looking to connect to the wider world around them.”

Larger and more agile networks are needed to stay ahead of the oncoming tide of virtual reality (VR), streaming video, gaming and other bandwidth intensive applications. To assist other telecom infrastructure companies in providing access to the worldwide web, Telia Company, the parent company of Telia Carrier and TIP partner, supported Telia Carrier in conducting the test of the Voyager solution and shared the results with other member companies. The test, carried out in early March, shows that decoupled Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) transponder systems are a low cost, low power option, with sufficient flexibility and accessibility for service providers to leverage within their existing networks. Telia Carrier, with TIP, Facebook and Coriant are all working together to reach the goal of disaggregating the hardware and software components of the network stack to unleash the full power of connectivity, for everyone.

“Coriant remains committed to open networks, and the Telecom Infra Project is playing a critical role in driving industry progress on this front,” added J.C. Fahmy, vice president of product management and business development for data centre solutions at Coriant. “The emergence of packet switching/routing white boxes like Voyager opens up the potential for more open, more programmable, and more cost-disruptive network architectures, and we are excited to be teaming with TIP to extend our LightIP networking software to Voyager.”

Telia Carrier’s global fibre backbone has grown organically, without acquisitions, and is the first to be 100G-enabled in both Europe and North America. It is also the first network to successfully transmit 1Tbps on its US network. According to Dyn Research’s global backbone rankings, AS1299, Telia Carrier’s global IP backbone, is currently ranked top-two. Telia Carrier’s rapid growth and ascension through the rankings was highlighted in Dyn’s 'Baker’s Dozen' report. The company enables worldwide connectivity by connecting more than 220 Points of Presence (PoPs) across Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East including over 70 PoPs in North America alone.